


pressing flowers

by asaiberry



Category: The Walking Dead (Telltale Video Game)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fluff, One Shot, Reader-Insert, Romance, louis is a weirdo, pre-clementine and aj, silly and lighthearted in the end, you and louis press flowers and he tells you he ate a dandelion before
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-25
Updated: 2020-01-25
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:54:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22397425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asaiberry/pseuds/asaiberry
Summary: 「 reader x louis 」you and i / well we're just pressing flowers / they're dying / but they're ours.「 insp: pressing flowers — the civil wars 」
Relationships: Louis (Walking Dead: Done Running) & You, Louis (Walking Dead: Done Running)/You
Comments: 4
Kudos: 31





	pressing flowers

"Y'know, dandelions don't taste very good."

He holds the stem of the flowering plant between his thumb and forefinger and stares at it closely. Its tiny petals wiggle as a warm breeze passes by, rustling a few of the other flowers and plants resting on the picnic table. You give him little more than an eye roll in response.

"And how do you know that?" you inquire, but you sound the least bit interested in this revelation as you pick up another flower from the table and lay it neatly on top of the page of the book in front of you. It's thick and bound with leather, probably a text one of the adults who once worked here owned. When you flip through its pages, you see lots of big words that you sometimes don't recognize, and you doubt any of the younger kids know them.

Louis looks at you in disbelief. One of his eyebrows is comically raised.

"Are you telling me you've never eaten a dandelion before?"

"No! Why would I eat a dandelion?" This time you tear your eyes away from your project and stare at Louis like he's grown a second head. He just grins, and shoves the dandelion closer to your face so you can catch its odd scent.

"Science," he pridefully declares.

You aren't sure if he's joking or not, but knowing Louis, it's hard to put something like that past him. Part of you wants to ask, but the other knows you shouldn't, and you pluck the dandelion out of his fingers before a petal pokes your eye out. It takes its place on the page next to a fresh daisy you found the other day, hidden near the edge of the wall closest to the gate. You like to think you probably saved it from getting trampled under someone's shoes.

"Right. Next you're gonna tell me that grass isn't so bad," you murmur in something like an exasperated tone. When the page was full, you carefully turned a few chapters over on top of the flowers you laid out. A fresh page sat open for you, its contents ready to soak up whatever flora you tucked away next.

Louis hums to himself for a few moments, as if he's thinking deeply to himself. His fingers drum against the table. "I mean, when you think about it, it's not much different than eating a salad or something," he reveals. "Sometimes it can cut your tongue though. Not recommended."

You sit there in stunned silence and stare at him through narrow eyes, betraying nothing but a look of utter astonishment at what he's just told you. Then comes a sigh.

"You're so weird."

Louis crosses his arms on the table. "But you still love me."

And that you did. But what wasn't there to love besides his terrible jokes and incredible knack for card games? Most of the other kids didn't see what you did in Louis. To them, he was some annoying jokester who found dark-sided humor inappropriately funny, especially when it got a rise out of Violet. Sure, she'd never actually kill him, but there have been times she'd gotten so sick of him, she tried to persuade Marlon to lock him out, saying he'd be lucky if the walkers got him before she could.

To you, Louis was like a flower. Fragile when things really boiled down, and equally a beauty among nature. He was colorful, an eye-catcher with juvenile yet charming gestures. Like a daffodil, he rivaled the sun even on the gloomiest of days. The rain could beat down mercilessly, but when the clouds parted, he'd be there, ready for another storm. It was his resilience you admired so much about him. Despite everything that happened, he was there, with you, an amalgamation of everything that reminded you of what it was like before the dead rose from the earth.

All you could really do was stifle a laugh and smile. "Yeah, I do."

Louis looks down at the few remaining flowers on the table. He analyzes them, decides which one should go where, before he picks up an oddly-shaped leaf you both thought looked cool when he found it on the trail leading to the creek and he places it on the corner of the book page. For some reason though, his smile begins to fade. Another breeze kicks up and you make sure nothing blows away. Louis shifts uncomfortably on the bench.

"Sophie and Minnie would have loved this," Louis murmurs, voice barely a whisper.

You stare down at the open book in front of you. A bittersweet tug at your heart prickles the corner of your eyes. You pick up some mint and lay it down on the page.

He mentions them a lot. You don't mind, but it's never a nice feeling to see Louis so torn about the girls. Marlon and Violet, too. Tenn's perfectly content drawing them from time to time, but there's little anyone else can hold on to other than memories and the lullaby Minnie left behind. To you, memories are snapshots of the past, intangible things you need to cling to before they disappear like smoke. There are things you know you've forgotten, some preferably gone, and things that you are beginning to forget, like the faces of people you once knew or the sounds of their voices, but there isn't much you can do.

So you press flowers. You salvage what books haven't been thrown into the fire pit yet, and during supply runs, you take a little more time searching for the perfect flower or leaf. They're flowers you find pretty, interesting, or meaningful. Everything you've pressed tells fragments of a story you want to keep remembering. It's almost like a photo album.

When Louis first noticed your flower pressing, he approached you one afternoon as you sat on the boarding school steps with two tigerlilies in his hand. He was keen to know what you were doing and why you were doing it. When you told him, he brought you the fiery orange flowers and said they reminded him of the twins. From then on, you and Louis made it a habit to always scour the area for memories to keep when you could, and you would hang out at the picnic table together before dinner to press your treasures.

"Do you think they liked pansies?" you ask him.

Louis ponders on that. "I think Sophie told me she liked the white ones with the purple tips the most. Like the wild ones over by the graves. She said it looked like the sunrise after dusk. Minnie wasn't really a flower kind of girl."

"We should make a book of pansies for them, then," you suggested, "I found a new book in one of the offices downstairs. Maybe Tenn could use them for his drawings, too."

A comfortable silence washes over you and Louis. His faces goes from solemn to uplifted. He nods mostly to himself and looks at you. His brown eyes pour into yours like cups of dark honey.

"Yeah..." he agrees, "That would be cool."

Life is precious. You and Louis are familiar with this. It's scary, never knowing when it might happen. Fate can be cruel to even the kindest souls in this world. Sometimes, you can't save everyone, but you can salvage the remnants of their lives and make something out of it. They aren't all your memories, but you enjoy knowing you can try to keep them alive for everyone else in the best way you know how. 

You gently lay the rest of the flowers across the page and close the book. As the pages flip, you and Louis catch glimpses of other memories pressed between the pages from days or even weeks ago. The colors are stark against the discolored white. You stop when you find a page completely filled with flattened dandelions from a few weeks ago. Louis laughs.

"Dandelions might not taste very good, but they press even better."

"What planet are you from again?" you ask, and close the book.

"Planet Awesome," Louis replies, and grins.

His eyes crinkle and he has dimples when he smiles. As the sun sets beyond the wall of the school, the light emphasizes his freckles smattered across the expanse of his nose and cheeks. You will never understand how Louis can look so perfect despite having not showered since the last time he showered. He gives you a weird look when he realizes you staring at him and waves a hand in front of your face.

"Uh, hellooo? Earth to [Name]? Are you sure you're the one not from this planet?"

It's your turn to smile when you blink your daze away.

"Sorry. It's hard not to stare at you when you're so weird," you retort, smiling.

Louis scoffs. "Quit calling me weird! I'm perfectly normal." He grabs the lapels of his jacket and tugs them in front of his chest with a smug look.

"You're perfect, but I wouldn't call you normal."

Louis stares at you, lovingly looking upon you like he did that night you told him you like-liked him. You were sitting next to him at the piano that was horrifically out of tune, watching him play, listening to him hum, when the words sort of fell from your lips without warning. He stammered through telling you he thought the exact same thing, and called you both pretty clueless after the initial shock. It's not like he was wrong. This time, it's serious, focused on you and you alone. He knows where every beauty mark is, every scar, every imperfection that makes you more perfect than any melody he's heard before. How can he resist you with your heart as golden as your love?

He stands up, leans down, and presses his lips against your forehead briefly. You smile at the close contact, and when he starts to pull away, you kiss the side of his face, and then his lips. Both of you smile.

"Honestly?" he begins, and steps out of his seat just as you do, "I think you taste better than dandelions."

"You think?" you ask, and lace one of his hands in yours, the book of pressed flowers in the other. Omar calls for supper and you hear Rosie bark at the sudden excitement to eat. As you walk with Louis, you lean your head against his shoulder and swing your entangled hands back and forth. The breeze filters through again, and the trees rustle quietly among the light of the sunset over the wall. It's a sight you've grown to love.

"No," Louis says, this time with certainty. "I know you do."

**Author's Note:**

> first fic so pls be gentle  
> i luv louis sm........ he deserves the world


End file.
